Black City
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4.7 • 3 Ratings
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- $8.99
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- $8.99
Publisher Description
A dark and tender post-apocalyptic love story set in the aftermath of a bloody war
In a city where humans and Darklings are now separated by a high wall and tensions between the two races still simmer after a terrible war, sixteen-year-olds Ash Fisher, a half-blood Darkling, and Natalie Buchanan, a human and the daughter of the Emissary, meet and do the unthinkable--they fall in love. Bonded by a mysterious connection that causes Ash's long-dormant heart to beat, Ash and Natalie first deny and then struggle to fight their forbidden feelings for each other, knowing if they're caught, they'll be executed--but their feelings are too strong.
When Ash and Natalie then find themselves at the center of a deadly conspiracy that threatens to pull the humans and Darklings back into war, they must make hard choices that could result in both their deaths.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Vampires, genetics, dystopia, racism, and star-crossed romance vie for space in Richards's overstuffed debut, first in a trilogy. In Black City, one of nine megastates in the theocratic United Sentry States, vampiric Darklings live in walled ghettos, segregated from the human population. As a "twin blood" half Darkling, half human 16-year-old Ash Fisher is an outcast among both peoples, but is drawn to Natalie Buchanan, daughter of the Emissary who heads up Black City. Readers won't have to try hard to spot the many parallels between the injustices of Ash and Natalie's world and their own, including forced relocations, crucifixions, and torture, along with allusions to Nazi Germany and the use of the epithet "nipper" for Darklings. Despite initial mutual hostility between Natalie and Ash, their romance is inevitable. However, it gets buried by unwieldy pseudoscience (including plague strains, genetic superpowers, and creatures with too many or too few heartbeats), Darkling lore, religious dogma, and questionable world-building, starting with the atmospheric but inexplicable decision to build a city out of materials that smolder in perpetuity once ignited. Ages 14 up.
